PS 3511 
.042 fl7 


1901 
Copy 1 











THE ART OF FOLLY 



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HIS Edition is limited to Se'ven 
Hundred and Fifty Numbered 
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Number /A..I.. 



The Art of Folly 



THE 

ART OF FOLLY 



B 



SHERIDAN FORD 




BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 

MDCCCCI 



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THE '- BRAHY ©F 

CONGRESS, 
Two CortM RecetvE* 

FEB. 13 1902 

OrrvcjiQHT ENTRY 



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Copyright, 189^ 
By Sheridan Ford 



UnVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



^ 



TO THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND 

TTT^HEN laughing Folly lulls degrading fear^ 

WisdonCs reproof falls lightly on the ear. 
Come ! let us forth with Folly thro* the land.. 
Forgetting JVisdom and her chill command; 
And., aiming to amuse the happy few^ 
Avoid the popular and parvenu ; 
And heat the coverts for pretence and fad 
As tho * a medal Merit never had. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. French Colour 3 

II. Salon of Industry 59 

III. A Song of Folly 113 

IV. Salon of Mars 147 



JDFER TISEMENT 

^^^HE superstition of paint has caused more confusion 
m among the sons of men than predestination by faith. 
To cover a piece of cloth with colour was thought a 
proof of genius once upon a time ; but the theory is dwin- 
dling in the light of publicity. The talent and training to 
paint in a way that will satisfy the official juries are of 
a mild and usual order. It was reserved.^ indeed^ for the 
craft itself to demonstrate that pictorial art and painting 
are not synonymous. 

The official show^ imposed upon the public as a shrine 
of art^ is^ primarily ., a device to advertise the studio of the 
Philistine. Impossible paintings vie with each other in 
chase of the medal; the clique in power bestows the coveted 
prize with conscientious partiality.^ and the mob applauds. 
Paint lingers in the lap of literature., while ' historical ' 
and sentimental fictions take the place of lyric beauty. 

Art is not based upon the subject treated., but upon the 
treatment of the subject. Subject is arfs apology for 
decoration. 

xiii 



ADVERTISEMENT 

No sane mind expects that pictorial art will ever be 
appreciated of the general, but it would seem that there 
might be some precision in discussing it. Nothing can 
be more inartistic than to lose sight of achieved dis- 
tinctions. The jargon of the bungler and the title in the 
gallery catalogue explain the painti?tg. The picture pro- 
claims itself The mass of mankind cares nothing for 
pictorial art in its refinement, the eye for colour being as 
rare as the ear for music or the head for mathematics. 
As the language of paint does not make for popularity, it 
may be admitted that the portrayal of anecdote and bathos 
without reference to pictorial harmony is, in its way, per- 
haps, as respectable a trade as soap-boiling. The demand 
for the produce is as the demand for chromos or the 
illustrated penny paper. When, however, it is imposed 
upon the ignorant as art, the transaction is of another 

shade. 

Those who deprecate a resort to the herb Panta- 

gruelian, because of the pain which it may cause the in- 
competent, seem quaintly blind to the pain caused the 
competent by inartistic performance. When a painter 
without artistry is pilloried, think of the Other Man, of 
the one with ideals and the wit to be true to them. In 
the crush of competitive prostitution, the brushman shuns 
criticism. The artist invites it, for he sees that only 



XIV 



M 



ADVER riSEMENT 

achievement shall fix his final place, Ben 'Jonson is not 
alone in the opinion that a self-respecting man can 
know no keener insult than praise unmerited. 

The Art of Folly treats of the Salons of the Palais de 
I'Industrie and of the Champ de Mars. // was first 
published in the Galignani Messenger of Paris^ where 
it achieved the execration cf the hrushmen in a manner 
so complete^ so unalloyed and perfect^ as to make me the 
pariah of my parish, 

S. F, 



XV 



y 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



FRENCH COLOUR 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



FRENCH COLOUR 

I SING of those who roam the happy 
fields 
To paint the lyrics Lady Nature yields ; 
Of those for whom she chants her primal strain. 
Weird, witching undertones of joy and pain ; 
That silent symphony the master heeds. 
The colour music of the skies and meads. 

Here is no closet-message to declare. 
The lore is lacking but the love is fair. 
Stern Wisdom never warms me with her smile, 
'T is winsome Folly lures me all the while. 
I worship Beauty with her, hand in hand. 
And, as the worldlings labour in the land, 
Bent with the woes of wealth and high repute. 
We stray apart and pluck the better fruit. 

3 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

So we are happy, with strange gladness warm, 
In summer sorceries and wintry storm ; 
When airs are vernal, and when winds blow cold, 
When Hope lies bleeding, and when Want is 

bold. 
We laugh at luck and bite our thumbs at Fate, 
And while away the hours with fond debate ; 
Rich, in the spirit, careless of the bays. 
We bid a jest atone for lack of praise. 

We envy no one, feel no trader's goad. 
For long ago we took the open road ; 
The road that laughing Folly, never shuns. 
Pressed by the naked feet of all her sons. 
King Demos spurns it as a barren ground. 
For creature comforts are not scattered round. 
He cannot brook its lack of tinsel shows. 
'T is not a crowded road, as Demos knows ; 
For Monsieur Worldly-Wise will never care 
To tread its slopes and breathe its ample air. 
We love it tho', we of the picture sense, 
Myself and Folly, doomed to give offence ; 

4 



FRENCH COLOUR 

We bare our backs to every pickled rod, 
And dance upon the pruning knives, unshod. 

And so, when worldlings hear me say or sing 
That Wit is dead and Wisdom on the wing. 
They know it 's but an idle rhymer's chant. 
Who never could learn prudence of the ant ; 
Who wastes his day, and bids the World wag 

by. 
And boggles where the wise would edify ; 
Who has no ' moral' lesson to unwind 
To vex the good or soothe the sinful mind. 

When I essay to sing a painter's praise. 
Know that I 'm laughing at his guileless ways, 
To think the man is such an arrant fool 
As to respect a sane artistic rule. 
Or hope the World will like a work of style. 
Or yet that worth may amateurs beguile. 

Insult and scorn for him who cares to be 
From smirking cant and cheap imposture free; 

5 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

The rude reproof, the cynic's awful frown. 
The careless censure of the gibing Town. 
When I accord a bungler gentle blame. 
And say his work is usual and tame ; 
And pretty adjectives impair my song, 
And satire seems to wax a trifle strong ; 
Know that, in sooth, I 'm merry at the joke. 
Intent with words unstinted praise to cloak ; 
But lost in admiration of the man 
Who always tries to do the worst he can. 
Reverse my lack-wit fancy every time. 
And when I 'm serious, pardon me the crime. 

All praise to him who can the Public gull. 
Whose forte it is for ever to be dull ; 
His home is fixed in mansions of the blest 
Where well-fed ' fakirs ' sink to sainted rest. 
Where wealth and honour line his peaceful 

path — 
There waits for him no woful aftermath, 
The aftermath foreboding Genius fears 
When slain Ideals haunt the sunset years. 

6 



FRENCH COLOUR 

While Wisdom's clever daughters would refrain 
From causing any brushman futile pain, 
The sons of Folly, with misguided zeal, 
May ' break a butterfly upon the wheel ' ; 
For unofficial rhymers will not down. 
Or cease from troubling here in Paris Town, 
While painters from the corners of the 

earth, 
Some sired of talent, some of little worth, 
Crowd for the prizes of official art — 
The Ribbons and the Medals of the mart. 

They cluster like the lackeys of a court — 
Not artist-painters but the other sort — 
And here 't were fitting in a weary way 
To note the trend of competition's play ; 
How far the artisans of paint abound. 
How far the artists, by a stroll around 
The rival Salons where the paintings throng 
In serried rows, imposture to prolong. 
I '11 play the preacher, and for pious ends 
Damn all my enemies and praise my friends. 

7 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Yet, ere we wander where the Salons wait. 

Regard the colour of an elder date. 

And, glancing at some names that France may 

boast, 
Culled here and there from a receding host. 
Observe the painters who, in whole or part, 
Have touched to finer issues pictured art. 

View Cousin's, Clouet's and the Le Nains' paint, 
Of drawing crude, of colour cold and faint ; 
The Fontainebleau group, of Italian aim. 
That never blossomed with a famous name ; 
Eclectic Vouet, of the technique vile ; 
Le Valentin, of cheap, archaic style ; 
And sterile Poussin, who could never show 
A canvas where he made the colour flow 
In aught save stilted manner, thin and weak. 
The so-called classic mode some painters seek. 

8 



FRENCH COLOUR 

O word misused ! what art crimes hast thou 

cloaked, 
What callow crudities and cant evoked ! 
Let us have done with such abuse of sense, 
A classic picture does not give offence ; 
It is not stilted and devoid of style — 
Style only can the classic grace beguile ; 
The theme is never classic, and we need 
A clean revision of the painter's creed. 
The classic style is merely what is best, 
The kind that triumphs o'er the Attic test. 
And no more means the antique than the new — 
The classic style is timeless, like the true. 

The Madrid master knew what classic meant. 
Its subtle shading and serene extent. 
He painted Men, not puppets poor and slight. 
Begot of palsied hand and blinded sight. 
Degas the worth of classic painting knows. 
Does Puvis, of the sad, consumptive pose ? 
The cockney of Phil May has classic grace. 
Not so the maid Du Maurier tried to trace. 

9 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

The landscape men of 'Thirty saw in youth 
What classic means, and how it stands for truth; 
Not truth of detail ; but of mass and tone — 
That culmination that is art's alone. 

Let us recuperate, be honour bright, 
And have the courage of selective sight ; 
No longer loiter at the bungler's lair, 
But learn that Classic Art is free as air ; 
Free as the beauty worshipped of her sons. 
The home-grown beauty that the bungler shuns ; 
Cast off all doubt and turn our backs on 

' bleat ' 
To wander with the master in the street, 
And know again the sanity that said : 
' The classic is but the romantic dead/ 



lO 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Tho' Claude selected as no master would — 
For architecture mars his every mood — 
His method makes for art in many ways, 
And he deserves a meed of tempered praise. 
He taught the worth of atmospheric tone. 
And limned it with a brilliance all his own, 
Corot can trace to him his liquid strain. 
For ^ Corot is a culmination of Lorraine/ 



II 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Here are some names the Parvenus revere — 
Names cherished of the Louvre from year to 

year : 
The wan Le Sueur, whose poor but pious aim 
May still the toil-worn tourist*s faith inflame : 
Antoine Watteau, of cloying pastoral scene ; 
And festive Boucher, brazen and unclean : 
Tear-trickling Greuze, who played an easy part 
By palming incident in place of art : 
The canny Joseph Vernet, called ideal 
In that he tried discreetly to conceal 
His lack of art by tracing without skill 
Things no man ever saw nor ever will : 
And tireless Vien, of the research vast, 
That book-bred one whose works his wit out- 
last; 
Who dreamed Historic painting could be true 
Tho' wrought without contemporary view. 



12 



FRENCH COLOUR 



The Subject-matter moulds the writer's pen — 
While painters treat of Objects in their ken, 
And deal directly with the surface shown 
To re-present the living touch and tone ; 
External beauty forms their ample claim — 
Essential beauty is the writer's aim. 
How shall a painter truthfully portray 
The form and face of matter passed away ? 
How shall he re-present and realize 
The thing that 's dead and lost to living eyes ? 
Some speak of antique style in modern art. 
Did ever Modern play an antique part ? 
The painter paints the picture of his hour, 
And paints no other with historic pow'r. 



13 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



In measuring the work and worth of Lives, 

Of him who dares or him who weakly strives, 

Discord must hush and faction fade away. 

And Time the poor and private feud allay 

Ere History can mark the final place 

Of those who fought or faltered in the race. 

Years strip the tinsel for result alone. 

And leave the fact without false shadow shown ; 

The Gilding yields to time and bares the clay. 

From off the Gold the dust is brushed away. 



H 



FRENCH COLOUR 



The painters may pursue a clearer line 
Unless, like Vien, they deserve to shine 
As * body-snatchers * of the buried Past — 
Those viewless vagrants as ' historic* clast, 
Who walk with careless eyes and journey wide, 
Blind to the beauty budding at their side ; 
Not seeing beauty where their feet are set, 
Convinced that distance beauty can beget ; 
As Tadema, who paints, sans shame or fear, 
' Greek * maidens of a Piccadilly leer. 



15 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Velasquez tried to picture Antique themes, 
And harried Italy for pulseless schemes ; 
Yet he, one of the masters paint has known. 
Turned back to Life for perfect truth of tone. 

Poor Leonardo roamed with restless feet. 
His work, with rare exceptions, incomplete. 
An amateur of many arts was he, 
Master of none that he has- let us see ; 
Despite his eager quest of stately style — 
Maugre the Mona Lisa's mirthless smile. 



16 



FRENCH COLOUR 



No painter, of whatever day or race, 
Has ever disregarded Time and Place, 
And wrought a masterpiece of dainty art — 
Art kisses close to Life nor flunks apart. 
She knows, tho' clique and faction clash in strife, 
The touch of truth is still the touch of hfe. 



17 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



What Leagues are wandered by misguided men 

Who think that Beauty lies not In their ken ; 

That she resides abroad where nations meet, 

And sons of exile sons of exile greet; 

Or In the fading Past where phantoms glide 

To woo the witless to their siren side. 

Stray not afield ; to your own Hearth she 

clings. 
In your cheap cot her welcome song she sings ; 
She misses none, she comes to one and all, 
In staring day and when the shadows fall ; 
Always she sings, she does not tire or fail. 
She haunts the Temple as she does the Jail ; 
She haunts the Palace as she does the Slums — 
Wherever men abide she surely comes. 

Dan Chaucer met her with a Pilgrim band : 
And Froissart with the Princes of the land: 



FRENCH COLOUR 

She lent the lilt of Roland martial aid : 
She laughed with Villon in the scaffold's shade : 
She prayed with Bunyan in a prison-cell : 
She mused with Dante in his home-made Hell: 
Melodious Shakespeare wooed her in the strain 
That sweeps the circle, charged of Joy and 

Pain : 
Velasquez with the dwarfs that tell to time 
How grace of style makes any theme sublime : 
Burns in his one clear note, serene and 

strong — 
The song of Love, the democratic song : 
Wordsworth in homely lays of calm content 
That breathe of peace to tired minds and spent : 
She touched Beranger in a garret high : 
She came to Heine 'twixt a sob and sigh : 
To wistful Chopin in the phrasing choice 
Of Music, with its sad and thrilling voice — 
The subtile splendour of the singing tone 
On waves of wordless passion lightly blown : 
She flew to Tennyson on golden wing 
Where roses cluster and the robins sing : 

»9 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

De Musset knew her in a squalid street 
Where prowling crime and sad-eyed misery 

meet : 
Verlaine in verse that ravishes the sense 
Like dreamy odours, delicate and tense : 
Poe held her hand where vengeful Memory 

flames : 
Hawthorne, by greenwood ways and Scarlet 

Shames : — 

In countless forms the flowing years prolong 
Her changeful music rises clear and strong 
And types the Universal, with its surge 
Of joys and griefs, its song and solemn 

dirge ; 
Those swelling harmonies with witchery rife 
That sweep the sounding chords of Common 

Life, 
And mark, like golden memories of youth, 
The strain of Beauty in the march of Truth. 



20 



FRENCH COLOUR 



A proud ' Historic/ of pretentious guile, 
The dreamy David won Napoleon's smile. 
And that Red Ribbon of official ' fame ' 
That crimsons over many a fameless name. 

A battle-artist of convincing force, 

The Corsican craved studio pictures coarse- 

As oft a painter of serene renown 

Has proved, in other walks, a sorry clown. 



21 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Girodet took the broad and easy path 
Of broken colour and Hebraic wrath ; 
Tackled the Deluge, roamed from clime to 

clime, 
And failed to make a picture every time. 
To glimpse the obvious, by brushmen taught. 
The broken colour marks the broken thought. 



22 



FRENCH COLOUR 



As Gerard was ' historic ' with the rest. 
He tried to meet the old, ^ historic ' test 
By painting things his eye had never seen — 
Dead kings of wooden face and woful mien. 



23 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The ' moral tract ' was Prud'hon*s plea for 

grace, 
He helped to make the French a Moral Race. 
To huddle on a man promiscuous praise 
Is to degrade him in the public gaze. 



24 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Le Brun arose, fair Vigee of that name. 
And tried a fall with coy but cruel Fame. 
Nine hundred paintings bear her modest mark. 
Nine hundred that reveal no vital spark ; 
For even when she sought her mirrored face. 
And tried to draw it with a girlish grace, 
Art turned away to hide a sunny smile, 
And praised the Subject, though she damned 
the Style. 



25 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



When Gericault assailed the ' classic ' lie, 

He launched a Raft that stirs the classic 

sigh; 
But, as he sought to show things as they are, 
The glad Romantics hailed him as a star. 



26 



FRENCH COLOUR 



With confidence and candour Gros reveals 
That mediocrity the rabble feels. 
He plagued the Corsican with pest unclean, 
And painted him as he was never seen. 



27 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Couture called Delacroix, with Gallic wit, 
* The dregs of Rubens/ but the words are iit. 
They mark the truth-line, maugre all attacks, 
And show a sense that Couture's painting lacks. 



28 



FRENCH COLOUR 



The Orient sketches Decamps tried to limn 
Are touched of tawdry colours, crude and grim. 
Fromentin had a more authentic style, 
And seldom trenched on anecdotal guile ; 
And yet he turned from paint to toy with 

prose 
And, as a critic, changed old friends to foes. 
He knew the value of official ' bays,' 
And the proud function of the flashing phrase. 



29 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Ingres ne'er faltered in his ancient aim, 

His work is ' serious, soulful, pure ' — and tame. 

The trinity of adjectives I quote 

Is one the ' classic ' cadgers use by rote. 



30 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Paul Delaroche essayed the murky Past, 
And feeble fictions failed him to the last. 
The style that fails of beauty, fails of truth 
A thing fact-finders learn in early youth. 



31 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The Louvre has never welcomed Michel's art ; 
Unknown in life, in death he rests apart. 
His blues and browns of low-toned, tranquil key 
Were harbingers of better things to be. 
He was a true Romantic ere the hour 
That saw the great Romantics rise to pow'r, 
And yet so careless of his climbing name 
He left his landscapes to be signed by Fame. 



32 



FRENCH COLOUR 



In 'Twenty-four the Salon bared to view 

An English Hay-wain of a beauty new ; 

A landscape revolution was in sight, 

And Constable had caught the trend aright ; 

That ' monumental amateur ' in paint, 

Of work too often tentative and faint. 

Then Rousseau came, a subtler style to sway, 

And landscape, long awaited, had its day ; 

The men of 'Thirty woke to classic aim. 

The French Romantics of far-shining fame ! 



33 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The colour tones that Rousseau loved so well, 
Like blast and blare of music's bursting swell, 
Are flushed of dying Autumn's wizard light 
When troubled day sinks into sombre night, 
And trace the tragic splendour of a quest 
That organ peals of stately strain suggest. 
His masterpieces pierce to Nature's mood 
When sullen, elemental forces brood 
Pregnant of passion, charged of wrathful force — 
The solemn pause ere storm clouds take their 
course. 



34 



FRENCH COLOUR 



A restful beauty mellowed Corot's brush, 
A beauty tender as the twilight hush. 
His witching scenes were wrought in lyric vein 
By sheltered woodland ways and peaceful plain ; 
By sylvan glens of singing tone and tint. 
Where what o'clock 's as plain as any print; 
By arching Skies with all their banners flown, 
With all their gorgeous, melting colours shown ; 
Clouds idling free, adritt for Summer seas. 
Touched of the dawn and ruffled of the breeze ; 
By pale, poetic poplars in whose shade 
The nymphs of Folly frolic in the glade ; 
The fading embers of the fabled day 
When happy Fairies danced the hours away. 



35 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



In youthful days Jean Millet drew the nude 
In festal forms that tried the prurient Prude; 
Of bold selection and seductive style, 
And colour sensuous as Sappho's smile, 
They still transcend 'The Angelus as art 
Despite the noisy reclame of the mart : 
The Angelus! in which the traders hear 
That high-priced, holy bell to- Hebrews dear. 
Of tintinnabulations that proclaim 
The market value of a mystic name. 

Tiring of nudes, the master's epic hand 
Turned to the peasant of his native land. 
And, with a genius searching and supreme, 
Struck out a new expression for the theme. 
His Peasant is no well-fed smirking clown 
Dressed up to catch the fancy of the Town, 

36 



FRENCH COLOUR 

But worn with bitter want and grinding toil — 
The sad and sombre victim of the soil ; 
And yet as clothed of dignity and grace, 
As charged of classic charm in form and face, 
As are the matchless marbles Phidias wrought 
Ere Art in Athens died of Ethic thought. 



37 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



When Troyon strikes a sure and subtle key, 
And ' lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea/ 
Van Marcke and Bonheur seem but Troyon's 

dregs — 
His cattle walk and stand up on their legs. 



38 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Daubigny pictured, with a trenchant tone, 
The liquid greens of laughing Summer shown. 
He caught the hush and glory of the hours 
When river marge and meadow, wet with 

show'rs. 
Stir to the music of a rhythmic rune 
As Nature sings the symphony of June. 



39 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



An expurgated Rousseau, light and gay, 
Diaz could trace the sunshine's chequered play 
With opalescent sou-hois tones and tints 
That sparkle like the leaping flash of flints. 



40 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Tho' talent lacks of genius, fresh and free, 

Dupre had talent in a rare degree ; I 

And, tho' convention cannot set the pace, 1 

A sound convention gave his pictures grace. 
Recall the water, and the boat, and trees. 

The cow, and red-capped man, of plastic ] 

ease : I 

A formula that practice made his own, I 

An easy method for the Market shown. '■ 

The pictures destined to safeguard his fame 
Are those marines that bring him public blame, 

In that they cast his formula away ^ I 

And show a more refined romantic play. 



41 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



A blithe contortionist in colour-rhyme. 
Rare Monticelli made his mark with Time. 
Less of the Gallic than the Spanish type. 
His tonic strain is often over-ripe ; 
The work is alcoholic, and it gleams v 

With lunar visions and fantastic dreams ; 
But what a colour when, with living fire. 
He paints the sting and burden of Desire ! 



42 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Isabey's heavy-handed shipping scenes 
Are clothed in darkling grays and dirty greens. 
As colours mix in hand they move in mind — 
The dullard's eye is ever colour-blind. 

A Prussian bullet gave Regnault a fame, 
To which his fever'd style makes futile claim. 



43 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Had Courbet paid attention to his art, 
And less to posing in the Paris mart, 
And left the Vendome Column on its base, 
And taught his truthful tongue a saving 

grace. 
And travelled in the straight and narrow way — 
He might have wrought some pictures in his day. 
He loved the swinging Seas in shine and storm. 
And limned one fVave that lives — in flawless 

form. 

There 's rue for those who seek achievement 

high. 
And yet, en route to Failure, fall and die ; 
But justice, too, altho* they ' do their best,' 
For Time shall put their methods to the test 
Of cruel competition with the few — 
The masters, who have taught us something new. 

44- 



FRENCH COLOUR 

And better those whom sound convention 

bends, 
Than he who on a good intent depends ; 
But who, without the wit to frame a plan — 
And lacking grace to follow those who can — 
Learns in the quiet of his sunset hour 
The mournful lesson of misguided pow*r. 

The master also may at first collate. 

And bid Invention upon Knowledge wait; 

Take note of workers who have passed away. 

Whose simple styles a study will repay. 

And mark the faults that dragged the witless 

down 
Ere they could reach and reap a just renown. 



45 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Far-ruling Bastien won a brittle fame 

By modern methods and a kodak aim. 

The style of Holbein taught him much of paint ; 

But failed to teach him a refined restraint. 

The system of Lepage eclipsed his art 

And bred a school of Bunglers for the Mart; 

For, tho' he died so young, his bolt was hurled, 

And paint of peasant low-life filled the world. 

Countless disciples awful failures breed. 

And a bad Bastien 's very bad indeed. 

The group that France has realistic styled 
Is made up of romantics running wild. 
The peasant poseur that the many paint. 
Portrays the creature as a peasant saint ; 
Mock sentiment supplies the place of style. 
And puts a premium upon peasant guile. 
Beauty in ugliness is nothing new, 

46 



FRENCH COLOUR 

\ 

'T is commonplace as Turner's tawdry blue. 

There be that treat of reaHstic art ' 

As tho' the kodak played the leading part. 
To Bastien, realism meant detail, 

Meant dry statistics, obvious and stale. ' 

No culmination crowned his static strain, 
Nor touched it of a realistic vein. 

The truth is that he realism lacked, j 

For realism is by genius backed, ■ 

And genius can reject and purge the dross, ! 

And count as gain what dullards deem a ] 

^ loss. ' 



47 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The posing Bashkirtseff, of book-born name. 
Who bared her Self, without a shift, to * fame ' ; 
Achieved the artless mob's approving smile 
By slavish copying of Bastien's style. 



48 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Women are lawless in the realm of paint, 
And lack artistic conscience and restraint. 
Art is with most a fancy or a fad, 
Rarely the passion that makes mortals glad. 
They ne'er invent a method nor a style ; 
But plagiarize with a relentless guile ; 
Till, with their pirate forays weird and wild, 
Bold Captain Kidd seems usual and mild. 



49 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Meissonier was the leader of a school 
That draws the studio hobbyhorse by rule. 
He could achieve an eyelash in a way 
To win the cultured public's ready pay. 
When seeking his position to define, 
Compare him with a painter in his line ; 
With Ter Borchjif you please, and then decide 
Which was the painter of poetic stride. 



50 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Some fondly prate, as careless writers will 

When parish swagger dims artistic skill. 

Of countless contributions France has made 

To art pictorial, aiming to persuade 

That many masters of serene renown 

Have challenged Expert praise and Public 

frown. 
What are their names, what masterpieces pray 
May yet survive to glad a younger day ? 

The French Romantics, with seductive sight, 
Invented landscape for the world*s delight ; 
But now Impressionists are to the front — 
While the Mob hisses, with its gentle wont. 



51 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Edouard Manet, in his golden youth, 
Led up the lightsome quest for plein-air truth. 
Of fire-new technique, tender yet robust. 
In his Impressions he was often just; 
Fluidity of movement marked his strain. 
And austere Beauty followed in its train. 
Indeed *t was he, though few his cause defend. 
Who gave to Gallic paint its present trend. 



52 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Claude Monet saw the need of sun and 

shade, 
Of dancing light on forest, field and glade. 
And, mastering the play of atmosphere. 
Moved up the art line nearer Lifers frontier. 
He can depict vibrations of the light. 
And handle colour with puissant sight. 
He realizes with a vision tense. 
And lords it with a fine and festal sense 
In landscapes of an atmospheric tone 
As fluctuant as Lady Nature's own. 



53 



THE ART O'F FOLLY 



The dainty Degas has a master's claim, 
Tho' Ruskinites aver his art lacks ' aim * 
And has no * moral ' lesson to convey- 
To fend the public virtue from decay ; 
Forgetting that the work of men of paint 
Is not to aid the Devil or the Saint; 
But to achieve the surface side of things 
And tell how living art to Beauty clings. 
Degas paints ballet-girls of grouping strange, 
And Paris washer-women at close range, 
With such effects of decorative aim 
As no Ruskinian twaddle need explain. 
He has that perfect sureness of the hand, 
Serene, victorious and divinely bland. 



54 



FRENCH COLOUR 



Aside from these, can any expert show 
Where else the French have bent a mighty bow, 
Shattered the white, and made the welkin ring 
Till Art pictorial stayed to cheer and sing ? 

Let the Louvre answer from her stately pile 
Where wasted canvas kindles Folly s smile ; 
Where masters muster ; but from foreign lands — 
Waitings with quiet grace^ on Art's commands ; 
Ready to bare their page of glory's scroll. 
And answer Adsum when she calls the roll. 



55 



II 

SALON OF INDUSTRY 



THE ART OF FOLLY 
II 

SALON OF INDUSTRY 

OBSERVE a Salon of Official aim, 
The goal and glory of the gentle game 
Where interest of Subject takes the 
place 
Of dainty treatment and artistic grace; 
Where medal-chasers, void of style and tone. 
Flaunt failure with the sense of shame unknown. 
A Salon that, despite repute afar, 
Is but a monstrous middle-class Bazaar ; 
With pigment wasted, canvas cast away, 
' Butchiered to make a bourgeois holiday.* 

Advancing imbecility is plain, 
The worse comes to the worst in vulgar vein. 
For one success, a picture sure and strong, 
A hundred 'custom-made* intentions throng. 

59 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

Metallic landscapes cry aloud for light, 
And pulseless portraits leer from left and right. 
Mock sentiment and anecdote abound, 
Legend and bathos scattered lightly round ; 
While studio wantons, graceless, coarse and 

crude, 
Glare into space with gestures bold and lewd ; 
The florid type the ' soulful * brushman knows, 
That serves, to trance the mob, in fevered pose. 



60 



.^ 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



The Salon is a bill-board, blazoned o'er 
With advertisements of the common bore ; 
And each recurrent exhibition knows 
The sweet credulity a bill-board shows. 



6i 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



In proud profusion, trying to the eyes, 

The varied schools come crowding for a prize : 

The Warm and Wilful : and the Chaste and 

Cool : 
The Square-touch : and the Channel squadron 

school : 
The Futile Frantic, charged of woe and crime : 
The Wild 'Historic,' out of space and time: 
The ' Soulful ' school, of sentimental rant : 
The ' Moral * school, of platitude and cant : 
The Fleshly school, of subjects piping hot 
That fire the yearning prude, and boil the pot : 
The Kiss-mama school, of the nursery cares, 
Of bread-and-butter brats and angel airs : 
The school Religious — and the school Profane, 
That mad distinction of a muddled brain : 
The ' Christian * school, that libels Christ for 

pay, 

62 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 

And trades on clap-trap in the formal way — 
The school affected by the Pagan crews 
That haunt the holy Latin Quarter stews 
For virgin subjects suitable to paint — 
Supplied the Sinner but denied the Saint : 
The Portrait school, that prostitutes for gold 
The stately art Velasquez loved of old : 
The Academic, lost to fame and shame : 
And other schools la-bas that one could name. 
Were all this studio jargon of the schools 
Aught but the bungler*s ' bleat ' to boggle rules ! 

Indeed, all schools are met and mangled here. 
All schools but one, the simple and sincere ; 
The school of Genius, glad To-morrow's school. 
That shuns the obvious and the easy rule. 
To dwell with Beauty in content apart. 
And mould the new expression of its art ; 
Reporting with a vision trained and free 
The many-sided moods of sky and sea. 
Fused and transfigured of artistic mind 
And born again, transcendent and refin'd. 

63 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

Is all paint sacramental unto men, 

And flawless art a fiction of the pen ? 

Are shirt-sleeve critics Children of the Rope, 

Mere sons of Folly, lost to love and hope ? 

Is Wisdom wholly hidden from their gaze 

In Salons reeking of oflicial 'bays,* 

Where dower'd Dulness flaunts a golden crown. 

Swells with pretence and lays his honour 

down ? 
Defending daubers with a smirking leer. 
And damning Merit with a civil sneer. 
As tho* in art there were no central sight, 
No fact for which the loyal masters fight, 
Only Opinion, colour-blind and bold — 
The theory of an interest craving gold ! 
Come ! let us raid these * Bleaters,* who essay 
To rape a dazzled public's praise and pay. 



64 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



With waxen wares see Bouguereau plod along, 
With weak but wicked nymphs and satyrs 

strong; 
With Cupid Mouille^ and with cupids dry, 
Enough to stock a harem, or a sty. 
The pasty puppets, void of virile grace, 
The turgid torpor and the dollie face, 
Untouched of atmosphere or vibrant tone. 
Are Bouguereau's stock-in-trade, nor his alone. 



65 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Jean Henner's model, of the mawkish strain, 
Still tears her auburn hair for Henner*s gain. 
One hour with pious pose she plays the nun, 
And then she plays a part the pious shun ; 
But whether as a Maid or Magdalene, 
A wearying sameness clothes her morbid scene. 



66 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



The light that artist-painters toil to woo, 
The light that brings to art a beauty new, 
Gerome's deft brush once shed ; but sheds no 

more — 
The consecration and the dream are o'er. 
The blaze of gold has led from Ney to this. 
From mountain peaks down to the deep abyss 
Where Cairo-corners jut, and lions pause 
In cool defiance of artistic laws. 



(>! 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



King Louis' Arch of Steel, by Laurens wrought, 
Reveals the Mental Minimum he sought ; 
Also, the kodak aim and Gallic guile 
That pass with Paris parvenus for style. 
He does the Big Bow-wow of Salon paint 
In forms that fairly clamour for restraint. 



68 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



The Touth of Samson is a youthful show, 
A very youthful thing as paintings go. 
The lily lad who combs the lion's mane, 
Is of the shoddy sentimental strain 
By Leon Bonnat out of Bible lore — 
For legend-loving children to adore. 

' High art' the wise it call, and traders claim 
It cannot come too ' high ' to suit their game ; 
For parvenus judge ' art,' so experts say, 
In terms of money, and no other way. 
Small cerebration brings the largest price. 
As amateurs are never over-nice. 



69 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



A nude neurotic, of familiar mould, 
Such as Lefebvre has often shown of old, 
Proves that his ancient, academic ways 
May still arouse a Salon jury's praise. 



70 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Jules Breton pdnts, on a peculiar plan, 
Peculiar peasants, never met of man, 
And shapes them into Sermons for the school 
That limns but never lives the Golden Rule. 



7« * 1 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Munkacsy's libels on the Nazarene 
No longer lend grotesqueness to the scene ; 
Those Ghetto subjects, of repellent tone, 
Are to their Yankee lovers wisely flown, 
While * portraits,* void of character and grace. 
Come thronging to supply their vacant place. 
The Munich colour scheme, revealed before, 
The stilted pose, repeated o'er and o'er. 
Still mark this brushman as in other days 
When studio clap-trap charmed the common 

gaze. 
His Salon Mindedness is shrewd and smart. 
With no damned nonsense about ^ art for art.' 



72 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Paint, the poor wanton, is upon the Town, 
Suing for gold to emperor and clown ; 
Go where you may, you meet her everywhere. 
And when you meet her, there 's a trader there. 
The Trader ! on the nimble dollar bent, 
Who plays procurer for a huge per cent. 
And starves the living genius out of sight. 
And robs the dead of every vested right. 
And leaves the Millets of a Christian land 
To beg for bread from Pity's niggard hand. 
While cheering still the coarse, commercial crew 
That peddles pigment to the parvenu. 
Till Time, the pitiless, shall fix its place. 
And cheap-jacks who have led shall tail the 
race. 



73 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The Jews, God*s Chosen People, never fade, 
And they control the cultured ' picture ' trade ; 
And, like the one that clamoured on Mars Hill, 
They work Hellenic beauty brutal ill. 



74 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



One ' Jimmie ' Whistler, noted for his bile, 
His back-stair methods and amazing style. 
Said, once upon a time, in lewd dispraise. 
That Art herself was on the Town these days. 
A senile fancy, sired of shallow wit. 
And, like its author, tainted and unfit; 
Serving to prove the looseness of the clown 
Who shauld have said himself was on the 
Town. 



75 • < 

1 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Art never yet was common to the Herd, 
She never yet cared aught for public word, 
Nor public frown, nor ribald public jeer — 
Art holds her head erect, sans shame or fear. 
They little know her blithesome, bonny way 
Who think she soils her skirts with common 

clay ; 
While those who ape Sir Pandarus of Troy, 
And hope for half-pence thro' her vain annoy, 
Find, when too late, the task beyond their povv'r 
At Ten o clocks or any other hour. 



-^6 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Harpignies on his matin fame relies. 
In sunset years painting the sunset skies ; 
The sometime touch, the oldtime happy light, 
Fading from out his faihng sunset sight. 



11 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The sins of Vibert are as scarlet grown, 
'Gainst Art and all that Art can call her own. 
His panels with rude anecdote replete 
Are like discordant faces of the street; 
The eye suspects them at a half a mile, 
The red is so much stronger than the style. 
He has the Salon Mind and knows his trade - 
All of his work Is strictly ' custom-made,' 
And so, perhaps, *t is idle to expect 
That he will ever dare a new effect. 
Or cease to ply his carmined brush by rote 
And paint a Cardinal without a coat. 



78 



SALON OF INDUSTRY . 



One lingers loth to judge Jacque's later work. 
Longing to pass in peace, and lightly shirk 
The hunt for fitting phrase and mellow rhyme 
To link his present with a better time. 
Art's downward slope is easy to pursue. 
No half-way houses interrupt the view. 



79 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



A pastel portrait by James Guthrie wrought 
Is with suave and finished beauty fraught, 
That proves he's mastered, tho' the Stipplers 

scoff, 
The art, so little known, of Leaving Off. 
A picture is not finished till it shows 
No trace of industry to mar repose. 

Where are the other Scots whose rounded grace 
Can add a charm to any time or place ? 
Melville and Walton, Henry and Hornel, 
Crawhall and Pryde, lovers of field and fell ; 
And Stevenson, the St. John of them all. 
Whose wit and worth push painting to the 

wall ! 
No group 's more free of unpictorial claim — 
Pictorial magic is its only aim. 
The men are young, the best is yet to be, 

80 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 

What is to come not even they foresee. 
'T is where a new convention may arise 
To gladden more than Caledonian eyes ; 
Where Robert Burns first sang the Song of 

Man, 
And rose above the parish and the clan. 



8i 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Respect the rarer thought, the finer strain 
That young men, come to consciousness, attain! 
Bold navigators of Financial Straits, 
Whose golden worth on no endowment waits. 
They sail the choppy sea of troublous art 
Without a thought of tacking for the mart. 
In every age and every port of Life 
They clash with Custom in appointed strife. 
And safeguard spirit in a world that breeds 
Too little spirit for its daily needs. 



82 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



John Swan's Maternity reflects the gleam 
Of old gold colour, like a Maris scheme. 
Its failing is o'erfinish, ever sure 
To win applause while cockney creeds endure. 

A story's current with the stamp of age 
How Ruskin, in a wild and ^ soulful ' rage, 
Complained that Swan's lean tiger-cat in clay 
Lacked powV to preach and point art's Ethic 

way 
Because the bronze could never be minute. 
Nor Swan achieve the whiskers of the brute. 



83 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Brangwyn has mastered every maudlin rule, 
And cruises with the Channel squadron school, 
His tearful tars are burying their dead, 
The posing ' mourners ' out of focus spread. 
At his next port of entry he should strive 
To ship a subject that is more alive. 



84 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



A Channel canvas, commonplace and tame, 
Brings Louis Dessar an official ' fame * ; 
Brings the ' third ' medal, that entrancing sight ! 
A third class compliment, all bronzed and 
bright. 



8; I 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Renouf picks subjects suited to his brush, 
And puts e'en Channel colour to the blush. 

The anecdotal Bacon has a mind 
Attuned to titles of a school-girl kind. 
His Channel produce strikes a gazer glum, 
Unless well fortified with Channel rum. 



86 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



O Chopping Channel ! where the breakers roar 
From Newlyn to Penzance on English shore, 
From Morlaix to Etaples on Gallic soil, 
How brushmen haunt thee for their yearly 

spoil ! 
What subjects crowd upon the maudlin eye. 
Soft, shoddy themes that stir the gentle sigh : 
Boats going ' down * in view of harbour light. 
God-fearing, drunken fishers dazed with fright : 
Boats shoreward bound, with heavy ' hauls ' of 

fish. 
All hands inspired with but a single wish — 
Anxious to flood their stomachs with bad 

Swearing strange oaths and grumbling at the 

fog: 
The wary housewives lurking close at hand 
To make a frenzied rush upon the band, 

87 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

To halve the happy spoil and share the gin, 
And teach their little ones the ways of sin : 
The Cross upon the beach where widows wait 
To tempt the la3s and trap another mate : 
The parting of the fishers, muffled warm : 
The priest who prays the fleet will ride the 

storm : 
The death at sea, the corpse and canvas pall 
Weighted of woful ' bleat' and cannonball : 
The harbor bar a-moaning in the hush. 
In terror of the dauber's deadly brush : — 
We know these paint-worn subjects like a 

book. 
And how they bait the literary hook 
Of callow bunglers with a technique vile 
Who rate the anecdote above the style. 
The end 's not yet, the Tide is whirling in, 
And days to be will bring more Channel sin. 



88 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Where did De Gravesande learn to paint the 

light 
Of laughing stars serene in summer Night? 
His seaview where the salt-kissed breezes blow, 
And mellowed, misty shadows faintly show. 
Is like a pictured poem, pure and fair. 
Singing of starshine and Sicilian air. 



89 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



When Louis Philippe reigned in Paris Town, 
And taught how nerveless king may lose a 

crown, 
Healy assaulted paint with eye severe, 
And entered on his overpaid career. 
Since then he 's made the helpless colour flow 
In one poor way for more than one poor show. 



90 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



* Historic* Rochegrosse daubs with lewd delight 
The old, historic Harlot's painful plight ; 
And makes one wish, quite willing to offend. 
It were his own and not bad Babylon s End, 
A picture can relate itself in mind — 
This failure is the unrelated kind. 



91 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



In youthful days ere Pearce had won a place. 
His Bible legends lacked of saving grace ; 
The aim was pious but the paint a snare, 
Tho' later on he sought an ampler air, 
And struck a sane and more convincing key 
With ' studies ' that, to say the least, were 

free 
Of Laurens' square-touch method that of late 
Has roused commiseration for his fate. 



92 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Salute the Cause that turns a man from art 
To tread official paths and please the mart 
With crafty painting, raw and commonplace, 
The focus shifting with each foot of space 
To meet the wishes of the careless crew 
That clamours for a dozen points of view. 



93 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Clalrin has climbed the great Hors Concours 
throne. 

And caters with the thought of shame un- 
known : 

The old, good rule suffices for his ken — 

If at first you don't succeed, fail, fail again. 



94 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Lord Weeks is not a lord of dainty art, 
His vision is perplexing, and the part 
He plays with paint is obvious and sad — 
In fancy fierce, in typhoid colour clad. 

Where *s Bridgman of the harem houris strayed. 
That even Weeks can cast into the shade ? 



9S 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The feeble focus of a Bisbing tells 

Of pigment juggled like a ' fakir's ' shells. 

Howe's cattle-pieces move to seemly mirth, 
For sometimes they reveal such pleasing dearth 
Of art pictorial that the gazer vows 
A law is needed to protect the cows. 



96 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Commerce and paint are blent in Ridgway 

Knight, 
And Art, poor thing ! in terror takes to flight. 
He never startles with a fancy new, 
But year by year bares bravely to the view 
Some posing peasant in crude colour drest 
To witch the proud pork-packers of the West. 



97 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The tawdry 'portraits ' of the Constant brand 
Delight the rampant, unpictorial band 
That paints its victims, when it paints at all, 
Arrayed like country bumpkins at a ball 
In shouting colours of a rainbow hue — 
Ranging from cardinal to peacock blue. 



98 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



A brushman with hors concours to his name 

May claim the profit of the portrait game. 

'T^his size, his paint seems * standing out ' to 

say, 

^en thousand francs, and those who care to pay 
Can have an honoured place upon the line. 

And in full Salon brightly soar and shine. 

In other words, the Artless, with the price. 
May be embalmed in pigment cold as ice, 
And, as a trader's bonus, have the right 
To face for eight wild weeks the public sight, 
Where they may take their wives and bid them 

see 
True Worth exalted as it ought to be. 

Let those who honour trickery as force. 
And worship portraits if they ' stand out * 
coarse, 

99 

L.cfC. 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

Turn from these feeble fictions on the wall 
To happy human faces in the hall, 
And note how gray they are, how low of key, 
In contrast with the pulseless paint they see. 
Then will they marvel at the man who tries 
With colour fictions to assault their eyes. 
And portraits that ' stand out ' shall take their 

place 
As vulgar produce shorn of saving gtace. 

A perfect portrait * stands within ' its frame, 
And at a depth behind it still the same 
As was the distance from the model's face 
To where the painter wrought in time and 

place. 
The frame *s the window or the open door 
Thro' which the painter looks his model o'er. 
And none but daubers, dead to art and pride. 
Would drag the model on the hitherside. 



lOO 



SALON OF INDUSTRY' 



Rosalie Bonheur, of the Van Marcke touch. 
Could never paint too often nor too much 
To please the traders of the busy mart 
Who deal in names but never deal in art. 
Her 'soulful ' goats of grim, metallic hue. 
On giddy mountain-tops of Reckitt's blue, 
Still charm the crowd as when, in other days, 
De Goncourt gave her of his painful praise. 



lOI 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Nine feeble figures, of an equal length, 
Depicted 'standing out' with frightful strength, 
Reveal how Walter Gay, by methods plain. 
Can cater for the mob in easy vein. 



I02 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



A glaring light, a row of old tree-trunks. 
And pious manikins that pose as monks. 
Make up a painting of a style and tone 
As good as any that Du Mond has shown. 
O sweet ^ religious art,' thou pretext tame. 
What crimes artistic flourish in thy name ! 



103 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The word maternal has the pow'r to thrill. 
Maternal scenes in paint need little skill ; 
But, when presented artless, bland and calm, 
How on the orphan soul the sight sheds balm ! 
Miss Klumpke can these mother-scenes reveal 
That make an artist-orphan retch and reel. 



104 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



George Hitchcock's tulips meet no more the 

view. 
He *s gone to hunt ' fresh woods and pastures 

new; ' 
Gone to paint Virgins for the cockney pit — 
Fat saints of shining halos that don't fit. 



105 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Where lags the ' artist ' of official note 
For whom the students cast the careless vote ? 
And is it true that Anderson has cause 
To doubt a Salon jury's cheap applause ? 
His ineffectual paint, of blue and green, f 
That ' to be rated needs but to be seen,* 
Proves to what pass a worker may arrive 
When halting hand essays with paint to strive ; 
Cold colour in decrepit drawing pent. 
Official * fame ' and feeble pigment blent. 



1 06 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



The gay Alphonse who trims a beard with 

grace — 
And trails the taint of garlic in one's face — 
Supplies a card to patrons of his chair 
With ' artist ' graved thereon in letters fair ; 
The whitewash painter is an 'artist/ too, 
And so 's the hasty lad who limns the shoe ; 
Yes ! all -are ' artists/ every Jack and John, 
And so the pretty game goes lightly on ! 



107 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The festive, untamed Chalon slashes oils 
As brushman may, the product of his toils 
Marring the side of an enormous room 
With crass vulgarity and venal gloom. 
The Salon catalogue has half a page 
Where adjectives in proud profusion rage 
Explaining what the brushman failed to show — 
A fierce but feeble-minded overflow. 

There be that judge, with solemn air and wise. 

Jokes by their length, and pictures by their 

size. 

Sweet are the uses of a Salon jury 

That will accord a waking nightmare fury — 

Without authentic claim to art at all — 

Four hundred feet of space upon the wall. 

This jury ' bleats ' of ' soul ' and * taste ' in art, 

And yet degrades the Salon to a mart 

Where counterfeiters have the easy ' right * 

To bilk the public with unchastened sight. 

io8 



SALON OF INDUSTRY 



Thro open door comes hint of finer grace 
As budding April bares her tender face ; 
And open roads invite to open fields ^ 
To all the witchery that Springtime yields 
When the Arch Artist tries the earth and sky 
With colour harmonies that glad the eye, 
O Lady Nature I how they libel thee. 
These men of paint who never help us see I 



109 



Ill 

A SONG OF FOLLY 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

III 
A SONG OF FOLLY 

THE quenchless quest of all the troubled 
years 
Is for the clean expression Fame in- 
spheres. 
Men seek life's painful secret to disclose 
In forms that fit their fleeting joys and woes : 
In Word, and 'Stone, in Colour, and in Song — 
The paths of thought to object, that prolong 
A little space the records of their part — 
The paths that parallel, and men call art. 



113 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The pictures of the Past are dead and dim, 
The chiselled marbles shattered, torn and grim ; 
The colour that the Grecians gave to men 
Lives only in the record of the pen ; 
The golden word alone can mock at Time 
In changeless beauty as the cycles chime. 



114 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



The New translates the Old : forms fade and 

fail; 
But Art abides to tell again the tale 
In form as fair, and fitted to the need 
That larger thought and broader methods breed. 
For ever fashioning, for ever new, 
Her moods are many, tho' her paths are few. 



"5 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Great art achieves the beauty of repose. 
That clear content the Milo Venus knows ; 
That restfulness the Elgin Marbles share. 
Serene and ample as the morning air. 



ii6 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



All art pictorial is, in sober sooth, 
Naught but illusion based upon the truth ; 
And thus the truth of art, for which men sigh. 
Is, after all is said, truth of the lie. 



"7 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Pictorial art has unity of aim, 

Its aim is pleasure, with no rival claim ; 

Its unit is the picture that portrays 

A single point of view, a focussed phase. 

In paint, as words, selection turns the scale, 
The master shuns, the tyro seeks, detail. 
In works of art observe what men omit. 
Rigid rejection is the rule of wit. 



ii8 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



The picture falls within the centred sight 
And types the unity that woos delight. 
In that one vision, clarified and true, 
A failure to conform would wreck the view 
And mark the broken and the static thought 
That's always under-done or over-wrought. 
The poise of perfect method comes and goes ,• 
But never ' happens ' — as some folk suppose. 
There are no accidents in art's domain, 
The perfect picture types the perfect strain. 



119 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Art, in whatever guise, from ' bad ' to ' best,' 
Must face the moving mind's relentless test. 
Must face the test of unity, as mind. 
And take its place as common or refin'd. 

Mind has one standard, and but one alone, 
To measure everything of mortals known. 
There 's not one standard for appraising art. 
And one for other tools of Life apart. 
Back of expression is the mental play. 
The form and colour can but chart the way. 

Art comes full circle in its ordered sight, 
Sustained and perfect in its lyric flight. 
Or fails and falters with the colour-blind — 
The troubled eye is but the troubled mind. 



1 20 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



' The taste for art,' of which the tyros treat — 
That phrase to awe the plain Man in the 

Street — 
Has never been, nor ever will be, known. 
Art has its grammar and its rules of tone. 
The seeing, like the making, calls for care. 
For energy of thought, and vision rare. 
All art is foreign to the natural man. 
And has no place in Nature's primal plan ; 
Habit is never Nature, and the part 
That habit plays is all there is of art. 



121 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



* The favourable verdict of mankind ' — 

Born of the hustled public*s hasty mind — 

Has naught to do with Art in any guise 

That artists can respect or recognize. 

Is Art a criminal to hide her face 

Till juried thick-wits shall approve her grace ? 

Reject the thought that she will e'er entreat 

The favour of the plain Man in the Street. 

The genius of appreciation flows 

In channels that the plain man never knows ; 

The talent called intelligence is rare, 

It needs a Southern slope and Attic air. 



122 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



Hegel is dead but writers still abound 
To throttle sense and amateurs confound 
With cant of art ' symbolic/ and the sheen 
Of ^ moral * art, and art's * religious ' mien, 
Till tired readers, alien to the game. 
Think seeing and not-seeing are the same ; 
Taught, in a tortuous and a cloudy way. 
That masters none but ' moral ' roles essay. 

Uncommon-sense is common everywhere. 
But common-sense is most uncommon rare. 

View Raphael, whom puritans adore. 
Who flaunted ^ moral * canvases galore ; 
The ' Christian painter,' of the ' pious ' tone, 
Whose life Vasari has in frankness shown. 
And flame-shod Corot, of the Rules of 
Love, 

123 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

Whose gay diversions Gallic writers glove. 
Or Turner, god of Ruskin's praise and pray'r, 
Who painted towns as red as sunsets rare ; 
Yet Ruskin knows, none other knows so well. 
The gentle truth would ring the timely knell 
Of all the ' moral ' platitude that flows 
Melodious in his blithe, effective prose. 

In words an artist, Ruskin types the kind 
Of British Philistine born colour-blind. 
His raging raids in paint reveal a man 
Built on the monkish and ascetic plan. 
Who hates the Renascence, .and loathes the 

Greeks, 
And loves Rossetti's ill-drawn, deathly freaks. 
His mind is feminine, and lacks the sense 
That springs from sturdy manhood strong and 

tense. 

Pictorial beauty does not charm his eye, 

He craves emotion, and the maudlin sigh ; 

Also, the childish literary guile 

124 



A SONG OF FOLLY 

That passes with Pre-Raphaelites as style. 
He cannot grip the fact, to others known. 
That painting has a language of its own ; 
That masters of the medium impart 
Thro' living colour tones their sense of art; 
And, just as Music has no need of word; 
But soars in sound waves like the song of bird, 
So painting in its ample, just domain 
Relies on Form and Colour for its strain. 



125 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



It is not ^wisdom/ ^ worth/ or ' morar theme 
That stamps the artist's vision as supreme ; 
It is that pow'r he has in age and youth 

To see all things in terms of ideal truth 

To see in terms of beauty, and to say 

All things in terms of music, fresh and gay. 



1 26 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



Beauty makes all things fair, from high to low, 
Because no imperfections from her flow ; 
Her very sadness wears a singing face. 
Glad with the singing gladness of her grace. 
She hides all flaws ; fits sorrow to a hymn ; 
Gives flashing sight to eyes that tears bedim ; 
She chokes our laughter with a sobbing sigh ; 
She checks our sobbing with a mirth made high. 
In her religion, murder, love and tears 
Course rhythmic thro* the even-flowing years 
As melodies in one enchantment strong — 
The moving music of her matchless song. 



127 



^^^■n^ 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



To Ruskin, art *s a preachment, * false ' or 

* true ' — 
Not an 'arrangement* of enticing hue. 
That is his basic blunder, and it breeds 
A mirthful medley in his painting-creeds. 
* Select naught and neglect naught * is the rule 
He fixes for the brushmen of his school ; 
And no more artless message could be 

brought 
To mark the range and limit of his thought. 

A painting fails of beauty when it shows 
The unrelated thing in touch or pose ; 
For every detail on the canvas shown 
Must wed the wooing harmony of tone. 

He's an atomic critic, and he tries 

To laud atomic painting to the skies ; 

128 



A SONG OF FOLLY 

(Until emotion softly intervenes 

And then — he lauds synthetic Turner's scenes). 

He worships detail, and his eye delights 

In unpictorial, microscopic sights. 

A coloured photograph to him is ' fair * 
When wrought with ' conscience/ ' soul ' and 

' loving care * ; 
For, with his British view-point, well he knows 
The scenic value of the * moral ' pose. 
What pleases him he brands as ' moral right,' 
And rates ' immoral ' all that shocks his sight. 

His theories of art from first to last 

Are of an insular and cockney cast. 

The landscape revolution wrought in France, 

That shook the art world with its fresh 

romance. 
Rouses in Ruskin no receptive strain ; 
But only cold, contemptuous disdain. 
He does not know to-day, for good or ill. 
The French can paint a landscape with some skill. 

9 129 



•m^mm^^tmimta 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

This narrow culture clearly serves to show 
The Nonconformist bigot Britons know. 

And yet, when all Is said, of praise or blame, 
His Paintless Pictures may safe-guard his fame ; 
The old man eloquent, his writing glows 
With precious patches of alluring prose ; 
And when he treats of landscape, now and 

then 
Delightful lyrics ripple from his pen. 
And aery visions glad the mental sight 
That none could paint, and only Ruskin write. 



130 



I 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



Morals are but the order of the Whole 
Typed in the Self, the individual soul. 
The moral is the ordered thing in life. 
And the immoral — friction, waste and strife. 

Morals tho* fair, are often touched of ' bleat,' 
To paint with insight is a * moral ' feat ; 
As moral as the Knob upon a Door, 
When fitted to its uses ; but no more. 



131 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The measure of morality in art 

Is whether it achieves its perfect part ; 

Pretence in any craft is moral crime, 

A Creed must reach to act in space and time. 

And if there *s aught immoral 'neath the sun 

*T is work that never should have been begun ; 

That uncompleted task of every man 

Who toils without a clean artistic plan. 

Art ' morals * may be measured by the sight, 

Artistic crime is never moral * right/ 



132 



/■ 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



To make a school of Morals out of Art 
Is to corrupt them both, in whole and part. 



133 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Can colour teach the Sermon on the Mount ? 
There be who think so, men of some account, 
Who year by year with tawdry canvas try 
To blaze with paint a pathway to the sky ; 
As tho* Christ^s deathless Word were out of 

date, 
And two dimensions could make meaning 

straight. 



134 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



What colour-worker shall inform his strain 
Of Shakespeare's melody or Plato's brain. 
Or tear the mask from Nature and portray 
The secret springs of Life's impassioned play ? 
The spirit is not always clothed of grace, 
The foulest mind may flaunt the fairest face : 
And yet what master of melodious prose 
Shall paint that face in action or repose, 
And realize its beauties to the sight 
In terms of truth and pure pictorial light? 
By its perfection only shall an art 
Real pleasure to the expert mind impart, 
And not by casual comments upon life. 
With information or with maxims rife. 
That yield no pleasure of the gladsome kind 
Art lovers love, and sadly seldom find. 



135 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



To draw is not to moralize but see — 

External beauty is the painter's plea. 

His aim, indeed, is Colour, Form and Line. 

A master can make many themes divine — 

But to limn anecdote as wittols may 

Is to employ the unpictorial way 

Of making Subject serve for lack of Style, 

In mode as easy as a brushman's guile. 



136 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



The mental toiler marshals from his brain 
Its finest music, its diviner strain. 
Or he but plays the charlatan, and seeks 
To bilk achievement with commercial freaks. 
Yet, tho* he win the plaudits of the mart. 
Fame, incorruptible, still stands apart ; 
And, clearer than the chatter of the Crowd, 
Her Silence rises, sombre, stern and proud. 



137 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Men do a thing because they find it pays ; 
But payment follows in uncounted ways. 
The blaze of gold beguiles the worldly-wise ; 
But Genius looks beyond the dollar prize 
Unto that better prize, not made with hands, 
Born of the sovran Spirit's high commands ; 
Serenely sure, tho' jesting Pilates doubt, 
The prize is from within, and not without. 



138 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



As it was written in the Book of Fate, 
The ranting rabble loves the second-rate ; 
For the one touch that makes the whole world 

kin — 
Vulgarity — is commonplace as sin. 



139 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The lust of cheap achievement ! that fierce 

bane. 
How many men of talent has it slain ! 
The ones who falter ere coy Fame will yield, 
And, blind to better fun, forsake the field ; 
Forsake fair aim to court the groundling's 

praise, 

And cultivate the safe and shameful ways ; 

And, lost to beauty and the 'sense of sight. 

Would rather be Respectable than ' Right.* 

Some say that sore necessity 's to blame. 

As tho' a word could cloak their sordid aim. 

Millet was poor, and so was Troyon, too ; 

But poverty did not obscure their view; 

The wolf of Need was often at their door. 

The wolf that Hals and Holbein knew before. 

The peace that passeth understanding came 

To teach them patience in their fight for fame ; 

140 



A SONG OF FOLLY 

Theirs was the grit that struggles to survive 
And keep the better part the most alive ; 
And theirs the joy that clean creation brings 
When singing Fancy mounts on soaring wings. 
The master's pay is in this Joy of Work, 
*T is not in lucre that his prizes lurk ; 
The world may rations give, but rarely more. 
For men are brib'd to grovel, not to soar. 



141 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Art is a cruel jade, of hopes and fears, 
Of climbing fames, of laughter and of tears. 
There came with her into the gray Globe's life 
Consuming ache, corruption, woe and strife, 
And all the fitful fever of desire 
That tries her Chosen with a sleepless fire. 
Life is not cut in sermons at her game — 
Her own perfection is her only aim. 
The most self-centred goddess known of Time, 
She counts her happy dead in every clime. 
Men barter peace and quiet for her wiles, 
And welcome pain and shame to win her smiles. 
And wander naked thro' unresting days 
To share the brittle glory of her ways. 
For whoso looks in her imperious eyes 
Shall serve her, glad and sorrowing, till he 
dies. 



142 



A SONG OF FOLLY 



With Worldlings^ ever reticent of speech ; 
With her own people ^ Folly ^ s prone to preach. 
Oft at the tender twilighfs peaceful pause. 
Careless of censure , as of cheap applause. 
She seeks the lonely haunts of workingmen — 
Some sculptor s, painter s, priest* s, orpoefs den — 
And wiles the dolorous midnight grief away 
With words of cheer that Wisdom dare not say. 



H3 



IV 

SALON OF MARS 



lO 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

IV 
SALON OF MARS 

THE Salon of the Champ de Mars is one 
That students seek and static painters 
shun. 
It hints of some endeavour, and betrays 
The search for subtle modes and simple ways. 
It marks revolt against the sterile school 
That, pow'rless to create, conforms to rule. 

The French are strong in technique, but to 

quote 
That technique 's all of art, as Courbet wrote. 
Pollutes fair Reason's pure and crystal fount 
And makes the dainty thought of no account. 

H7 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



View De Chavannes, of proud official ' fame,' 
A * cock-eyed primitive/ of mournful aim, 
Who scorns the sane and single point of view 
And turns aside to cultivate anew 
The misty visions of the mad and sad 
In gravity and grayness thinly clad. 
Yet, tho' his easel paintings give one pause. 
His mural-pieces merit sound applause ; 
Ste. Genevieve, that sheer romantic flow'r, 
A Pantheon ' mural,' is replete with pow'r. 



148 



SALON OF MARS 



Roll paints the play of sunlight on the grass 
In racy style, and he can paint a lass 
Naked and glad and glowing like a rose 
To mark the Line of Beauty in repose. 
His leaf-fring'd witchery with woodland scenes 
Where chequered sunshine glints the golden 

greens 
Is worthy of the haunts where wood nymphs 

roam 
And, with the Pagan painters, find a home. 



149 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The long and sultry question of the Nude 
That theme to fire the fancy of the prude • 
Is not so much a problem of the part 
As of the whole, the perfect thing, in art. 
The hidden ever hints of the unclean, 
The lewd retreats in presence of the seen. 



150 



SALON OF MARS 



The work of Duran lacks refining touch — 
That bloom of perfect art that tells so much. 
His portraits type the tawdry, and they please 
The public eye, the public fancy seize. 
A painting in selection sadly marred, 
That, wanting unity, shows sharp and hard, 
Constrained and vulgar, with a bourgeois air. 
Has, with the masters, neither lot nor share. 



151 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The Besnard colour schemes are pure and 

strong, 
And beam with beauty like a short, sweet 

song. 
His is the level of distinguished style 
Without a touch or trace of book-won guile. 
Style ! that fair attribute of stately art, 
That safeguards Fame and sets the strong 

apart. 



152 



SALON OF MARS 



Zorn takes the short cuts with a Gallic ^ flair,' 
And seldom hesitates or beats the air. 
A water-colour nude that bears his name 
Is one to widen any painter's fame. 
Of' tone authentic and of treatment quaint. 
It would arouse the Lady Grundy's plaint 
Were she alive, but, as is known, she *s dead — 
Dead to the dainty, to refinement dead. 



153 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



But when of water-colour work I sing, 
Let me an artist to your notice bring : 
Rare Arthur Melville, of achievement bright, 
Who makes the card-board pulse with living 

light ; 
Whose Spanish bull-fights and whose Arab 

scenes 
Reveal his perfect grip of all- the means 
That go to make the product that 's unique — 
The toil-won triumph that the masters seek. 

Ere Cosmo Monkhouse writes another book 
To blind our sense, and bait the trader's hook, 
With praise of English water-colour schools. 
Let him acquire the water-colour rules : 
Go learn that stippling is less used of late. 
And teach his pen its ardour to abate 

154 



SALON OF MARS 

When praising groups whose pale and feeble 

style 
Beside the master's would evoke a smile. 
Let Prout and others fade in fameless night — 
Those frigid ones who freeze Monkhouse's 

sight — 
And let him study surer work and ways 
And learn to mete the living genius praise. 

This trick of waiting till a man is dead 
To twine the trailing laurel for his head. 
Smacks of the worldly-wise, who wish to 

know 
A picture's ' moral ' ere they praise bestow. 
Yet, as the subject has been brought to view, 
I may, perhaps, delight the pious few 
In stating, by the way, that Melville 's. strong 
And shuns the sinfulness of painting wrong. 
I might applaud his colour, rich as wine. 
His ' one-touch ' rendering of tone and line — 
A touch unerring, charged of subtle force. 
That 's never commonplace and never coarse — 

155 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

But this is needless, for he 's made his place 
Both as a painter and a man of grace 
Whose brush sheds beauty as the sun sheds fire, 
A man Archdeacon Farrar could admire ; 
Altho' his style might not archdeacons strike, 
For Holman Hunt and Melville paint unlike. 



156 



SALON OF MARS 



Lerolle a Flight to Egypt has essay' d, 
And does his best the subject to degrade. 
The girls who pose as angels in the sky 
Reveal the value of this tradesman's eye ; 
Feeble in colour, false to art and fact, 
They fit, in black-and-white, ' a moral tract * 
Such as fond parents give to little boys 
To make them weep and blight their youthful 
joys. 



'57 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



A slop-pot painted with artistic grace 
Is greater than an angel commonplace. 



158 



SALON OF MARS 



George Inness is en route to happy Fame 
With restful landscapes of romantic aim. 
Xhe vapour of the verdure bathes his work. 
And tender half-tones in the foliage lurk. 
He knows the hour, the season and the scene 
When Lady Nature dons her darkest green. 



159 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The Bismarck of the fine and lordly pose 
Carries the dignity that Lenbach knows. 
Such painting is not wrought to disappear 
With short-lived, puerile ' pictures of the year/ 
As brushmen of the year so aptly class 
Their Springtide produce that but blooms to 
pass. 

The painters of a clean, artistic aim 
Are ahen to the yearly Salon game 
Where journalists who cannot understand 
Conceive the daub the Big Drum of the band. 

Paint-quacks or ' critics,* call them what yoti 

will, 
Their colour-bhndness profits more than skill ; 
They know the value of conforming line. 
And how, for Bottom's ears, the blossoms twine ; 

160 



SALON OF MARS 

As that discreet and ever careful Child 
Whose paint essays for Harper s are compiled ; 
Who sounds the brushman*s praise in cat's- 

foot prose. 
And has a fondness for official shows ; 
Who sees in Reinhart, of the fading ' fame/ 
' An artist irreproachable in aim ' : 
And rates Frank Millet, of the stippled wile, 
' The equal of Dutch masters in his style ' : 
Who deems Childe Hassam ^ delicate and fine ' : 
Babbles of Humphrey M oore^s ' exquisite line ' : 
And terms Dannat * the hero of a class 
* That few may equal, no qne can surpass ' : 
Who finds in Ridgway Knight ' artistic truth,' 
And calls, in contrast, Jean Millet ' uncouth ' : 
Who vaunts *the solemn calm' of Pearce's 

paint : 
The Stewart ' portraits ' of the colour faint : 
And dotes upon * a symphony by Gay,' 
' The best work of its kind in airy gray ' : 
Who cheers ' the pious corpses ' Weeks has 

shown — 

II i6i 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

The phrase is Child's, the thought his honest 

own — 
While Mosler*s ^ adequate/ and Vail is ' strong/ 
And all, to Child, are ' charming ' in the throng. 

Is Faith an invalid and Frankness dead, 
And Truth by smirking Toleration led? 
Believe it not till Ruskin reigns again — 
That master of the unpictorial pen — 
With all his crew from Child to Humphry 

Ward, 
Praised of the ' duffer,' pitied of the Lord ! 



62 



SALON OF MARS 



America may boast two men of sight, 
Two painters of supreme pictorial might — 
Whistler and Sargent, who have clearly wrought 
Serene inventions of artistic thought. 



163 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



For many years the prints of London Town 
Have treated * Jimmie* Whistler as a clown, 
While Yankee journals tailed the cockney van 
And showed him as a snobbish, vain old man. 
He 's all of that ; but he is something more. 
And years to be his prestige shall restore. 
When * Jimmie ' sleeps beneath the daisied 

sod — 
In peace, at last, with man if not with God — 
Then we '11 forget the 'Jimmie ' whom we know. 
The vulgar ' Jimmie,' posed for public show. 
Who proves in ways at war with wit and art 
That workers and their work are things apart. 
And we '11 remember Whistler, that clear type 
Of clean achievement, serious and ripe ; 
Of art successes so sustained and true 
They tend to boggle Ruskin and his crew 

164 



SALON OF MARS 

Who yet maintain ' — as Turner lovers can ! — 
A painter is, perforce, a gentleman. 

*T was Whistler who, with vision that transcends, 
Pressed on serenely where Velasquez ends. 
And took the method of the Japanese — 
Their shy suggestion and seductive ease — 
And shaped for curious Nineteenth-century 

needs 
The colour schemes that only genius breeds. 
Their lyricism, perfect yet restrained. 
Reveals what goals by reticence are gained. 
His etchings and his lithographs beguile 
With strange, mysterious subtleties of style ; 
They take you to high places where, below. 
The wavering lights and shadows come and go. 
His portraits have a dignity and grace 
Such as the Madrid master loved to trace. 
His nocturnes and his symphonies invite 
With haunting melodies of liquid light 
That will transmit their charms to other days 
For other Ruskins to refuse them praise. 

165 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



John Sargent has a magic with the brush 
That puts the common painter to the blush. 
His method is so large and sound and free 
It rings the changes of a lyric glee. 
To pose dramatic and to style intense 
He weds imaginative colour sense. 
And turns off Pictures with a dash and ease 
That please the amateur and expert please. 
A rare conjunction, such as Corot knew 
Who charmed the Many as he charmed the 

Few. 
Sargent has never catered for the martj. 
A thing to say ! the man respects his art. 



1 66 



SALON OF MARS 



Cecelia Beaux affects the Sargent style, 
And proud Invention passes with a smile. 
As Cassatt apes Chavannes, and Gardner seeks 
To trace the arid Bouguereau's angel freaks, 
So Sears recalls the Thayer schemes, and lo ! 
The ^ lady artists ' lightly come and go. 



167 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Ten feeble efforts to depict the nude 
Are titled Music, as though colour crude 
Had aught to do with rhythm, as though name 
Divorced from style could bring a bungler 

fame. 
The work that lacks of beauty, lacks of 

thought — 
In paint, as words, real worth is beauty-fraught. 



i68 



SALON OF MARS 



Here 's Muhrman with his landscapes of the 

Heath, 
Gray skies above, poetic scenes beneath. 
Why does he linger on the white chalk shores 
Where the Pecksniffian Ruskinite adores 
The musty 'moral* tale, and counts as dross 
All paint that does not preach or teach, or toss 
A sop to virtue ? Has he turned aside 
By Happy Hampstead ever to abide ? 
One knows not, yet 'twere well to name in 

rhyme 
A pure pictorial painter of his time. 
Whose landscapes with the solemn sorcery glow 
That 's born of wistful sunsets fading slow. 
The cockney ' critics ' rate him as a dunce. 
And damn him as some did George Morland 

once ; 

Despite their damning and their ribald jeers, 
The man 's an artist, honoured of his peers. 

169 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The works of Matthys Maris are a kind 
To linger in the cloisters of the mind. 
His dear, dream-faces call up love-led days 
When winsome maidens dwelt on hidden ways, 
And stainless Faith transfigured hall and 

bow'r — 
The old gray years when knighthood was In 

flow'r. 
And the Red Swineherd wound his elfin horn, 
And casements oped ' in faery-lands forlorn.' 



170 



SALON OF MARS 



The foggy Carriere mocks the Maris scheme 
Of misty colour, faint as fleeting dream. 
What is with Maris an authentic trait, 
Copied by Carriere ranks as second-rate. 



171 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



The style of Dannat seems to shift and veer 
And vanish like the snows of yester-year ; 
Until at last the jesters all expect 
To see him try each spring a new * effect.* 



172 



SALON OF MARS 



The Raffaelli sketches, coarse yet quaint. 
Are like a Charles Keene black-and-white in 

paint. 
His Dannat ' study * has official grace. 
The sitter's Red Rag proudly in its place 
And blabbing reclame at the button-hole — 
The focussed symbol of a Gallic dole. 



173 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



O Red Rag of the Legion! cheap but fair, 
How Merit flings thee to the startled air ! 
Thy function in this world is manifold, 
The soldier loves thee, and the bourgeois 

bold; 
But there is none that loves thee quite so much 
As brushman putting Fortune to the touch. 



174 



SALON OF MARS 



A sun-kissed field of golden, billowed grain 
Is wrought in Cazin's most romantic vein ; 
That lyric vein informed of arfs repose, 
And moist with beauty as a dew-drenched rose. 



175 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Of drawing crude and colour like the night. 
The Ribot paintings still assault the sight. 
His scullion and his cook and frying-pan, 
And shrouded woman of a pallid plan 
With lantern face and long Rossetti jaw — 
Defy the canons of artistic law. 



176 



SALON OF MARS 



Israels caters to the worldly-wise ; 
But maudlin scenes do not his game disguise. 
Is bread so dear in Holland that a man 
Need prostitute his art, as painter can 
When lured into the broad and easy way 
Where Art*s assassins strangle her for pay ? 

Brave Matthys Maris could an answer give. 
That happy one who never paints to live 
But lives to paint, careless of gold and fame - 
Contemptuous of the money-catcher's aim. 



12 



177 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Of pose eccentric and of colour coarse, 

Boldini struggles for a tour de force. 

He has a clipping cleverness of tone, 

And skirts, but never mounts, the master's 

throne. 
His morbid technique gives the eye offence, 
A technipue tiresome to the finer sense. 



178 



SALON OF MARS 



Technique ! that Gesture visible of mind/ 
That stamps its maker vulgar or refin'd. 
The right technique ! how much there is in that 
Your flashy brushman only boggles at ! 



179 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Blanche is Boldini minus Southern fire; 
But one will flicker and the other tire : 
Neither is great, for each has won a place 
With more of reclame than abiding grace. 
And yet, perhaps, they meet the Ruskin test, 
And ' try, with loving care, to do their best/ 



i«o 



SALON OF MARS 



In Yankee mining camps where strangers roam 
In search of sudden wealth not found at home ; 
Where life is cheap and whiskey very ' high/ 
And pistols lead to mansions in the sky ; 
The Music Halls entice the ennuy'd crowd 
With cracked pianos, tired of life but loud ; 
And signs abound, this sign among the rest, 
* Don't shoot the player, for he does his best.* 



i8i 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Dwight Tryon can depict an ocean scene 
With touch that 's tender and with sight serene. 
The colours' easy and seductive flow 
Still glads his canvas when the breezes blow 
From off the frolic seas, and tides run deep 
And waves are flecked of foam, and surges sweep 
The yellow sands, and the translucent green 
Of laughing water sheds the mellowed sheen 
Of golden rays that kiss the shining sea. 
As tumbling ocean, turbulent and free. 
Beats with the jocund stir of light and life. 
And all the Winds are out, and joy is rife. 



182 



SALON OF MARS 



Melchers has turned from Bible lore at last. 
And seeks, with saner work, to blot the past. 
His sight is normal when, rejecting guile. 
He weds to truth of substance truth of style. 
His kind-eyed Holland maids of canny face 
Are touched of colour and convincing grace ; 
And sometimes with that tempered technique 

sing 
That Henry James would call * the real right 

thing/ 



183 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



What of the splendid Monet's merry men 
Who focus all the sunshine in their ken, 
And muster in these halls with pigment coarse, 
Devoid of many things but not of force ? 

Convention is to seek, and, strange to say. 
No culmination crowns their shining way. 
They ' hold the mirror up to Nature's face,' 
But hold it up, at times, too close for grace. 
There lurks an ideal here, and one sublime. 
The labour pains will sink to rest in time. 



184 



SALON OF MARS 



The sun-god men who work in shadeless ways, 
And welcome beauty born of golden days, 
Should not forget that Nature yields to mood. 
That, at her best, she 's neither coarse nor 

crude. 
Her superb palette has both tint and tone 
No painter of impressions need disown. 



185 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Impressions that impress are somewhat rare — 
To catch the shiver of the open air 
And paint it with a touch refin'd and true 
Is only given to the chosen few. 
Impressions are experience, and they teach 
The painter's depth, his consciousness and reach. 



1 86 



SALON OF MARS 



There are three words, synonymous and clear. 
That picture lovers everywhere revere : 
The classic, the impressionist, and real — 
Three words of simple force the masters feel. 
The first Impressionists of classic aim 
The Land of Cherry Blossoms gave to fame ; 
And they 're the Chiefs of realism too — 
The Classic Realists of impressions true. 



187 



THE ART OF FOLLY 



Claude Monet uses, with essential ease, 

The basic method of the Japanese 

Who trace thQ fee/ing of the object shown 

Thro' realism of the form and tone. 

In handling masses they reject detail. 

And triumph where atomic painters fail. 

Like the old Greeks they better Nature's best. 

And this is Classic Art's abiding test; 

For ideal truth is Beauty's inner law 

Freed from the trammel of material flaw. 

Hundreds of years ere Monet saw the light, 
Or Degas came, to charm with central sight. 
Ere Whistler was, or Beardsley had his hour, 
The Japanese Immortals rose to pow'r. 
And wrought, with startling truth of type and 
place, 

188 



SALON OF MARS 

Supreme impressions of exquisite grace, 
Steeped in the shining sorceries that attain 
The singing splendour of the Grecian strain — 
That old, undying charm that woos delight 
In flawless beauty 'winged for world-wide flight/ 

They drew the morning with its eager air : 
The twilight pause that hushes toil and care : 
Starshine and moonlight : and the flaming rays 
Of flooding sunshine in meridian blaze : 
Autumn's hoar-frost and Summer's silver dews 
That mock the misty opal's magic hues : 
The country's peace : the city's stir and strife 
When moving masses crowd the streets with 

life : 
Landscapes and figures : flying birds and bees : 
Rainstorms and rainbows : and emblossomed 

trees : 
The peach's bloom : the lily's saintly grace : 
The single flower in the slender vase : 
Water that runs : fishes that float and swim 
In streams of liquid sapphire sweet and dim : 

189 4% 



THE ART OF FOLLY 

Snowscapes that shed the Winter's ghostly glow 
Where wind-tossed flakes are driven to and fro : 
Poetic mountain-tops that stretch away 
Sun-kissed and solemn in the dying day : 
The ocean's sparkle and reluctant surge 
As laughing colour lyrics meet and merge : 
Nocturnes and harmonies that take the breeze 
And catch the glamour of the dreamy seas : — 
All these they drew with beauty that endears 
And Glory guerdons down the sordid years. 

'They met and mastered every phase of art 
That Occidental painters may impart ; 
And still on fan and screen^ on vase and urn. 
Can teach us more than we shall ever learn. 



190 



Fet. 15^ 1®^^' 



FEB 13 1902 

1 COPY DEL lOCAT.OlV. 
FEB. 13 1902 



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